When we first meet her, Myah (Vanessa Sears), the central character in Amanda Wilkin’s solo play “Shedding a Skin,” is confined to a box.
Or rather, she’s stuck in a generic office cubicle in London, England, grinding away at a job she doesn’t like, surrounded by workers she barely knows and an obnoxious, patronizing boss.
All of that is about to change, however.
In one of the most memorable openings to a play this season, Myah, who’s Black and probably in her early 30s, is pressured by her manager to pose for a company photograph with the two other racialized people in the office.
The company, it turns out, has received some complaints about its lack of diversity, and so the three are meant to provide photographic evidence of “inclusivity in the workplace.” They are statistics, not people. One of them, the office cleaner, is dressed in a suit and not their work uniform.
I won’t spoil Myah’s explosive reaction to this ridiculous scenario. But I should point out that the maintenance employee is upset that the photograph was ruined. He had worked there for 17 years, unlike Myah’s six-week stint, and had never, until then, been acknowledged by the company’s higher-ups. Dressing up was his idea.
Before the day is over, Myah loses her job, her partner and home. But quicker than you can say “21st-century millennial privilege,” she’s answered an ad to rent a room on the 15th floor of a tower block. Her new landlady/roommate is an older Jamaican-English woman named Mildred, someone with a heavy Caribbean accent, strict housekeeping rules and a mysterious past.
And Mildred, it soon becomes clear, will be the one to make the lonely, directionless Myah find herself and shed her old skin for a newer, more permanent one.
“The space between where I am and where I want to be is deafening,” says Myah about a third of the way into Wilkin’s 90-minute show.
It’s a memorable quote, but it brings up one of the script’s biggest problems. Where does Myah want to be? And for that matter, what does she want? Up until then and, indeed, until the show’s thrilling and moving climax, she remains a passive figure and passivity is hard to make interesting onstage.
Wilkin does, however, add another dimension to her script by interspersing Myah’s tale with third-person accounts of others struggling to get by in various parts of the world. These brief vignettes, while initially disorienting, soon become a mysterious, and moving, commentary on human connection.
To make a show like this work, and Cherissa Richards’ production ultimately does, you need a strong, charismatic actor. (Wilkin herself performed the play when it debuted at London’s Soho Theatre in 2021.)
Sears, who is equally adept at musical theatre (“Kinky Boots,” “Mary Poppins,” “New York, New York” recently on Broadway) and straight plays (“Is God Is,” Stratford’s “Romeo and Juliet”), commands our attention throughout.
Besides suggesting a woman who’s searching for some meaning to her life, she easily transforms into various characters, from the judgmental, tsk-tsking Mildred and the passive aggressive manager to the fearless Gen Z cubicle mate at Myah’s new job.
Each character not only has a specific way of talking but also a unique way of holding themselves and moving through the world. Sears ensures each character comes through clearly.
Richards does a fine job in evoking Myah’s world.
Jung-Hye Kim’s set initially seems like a claustrophobic box, but as the show’s protagonist begins opening up to new experiences, the box similarly opens up to give her more room to breathe. All of this is enhanced by Shawn Henry’s subtle lighting design. And a half-dozen screens hang from the rafters, on which Laura Warren’s projections orient us to where we are in the city or, in the case of those vignettes, the rest of the world.
Back in 2020, “Shedding a Skin” won a prestigious writing award in England, and one of the judges was the acclaimed author and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
Like “Fleabag,” Waller-Bridge’s breakthrough work, this solo play could also be successfully adapted for a Netflix series. That longer format would let Myah come into her own and dramatize, rather than merely recount, her inspiring, universal coming-of-age tale.
